What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.

Christopher Hitchens (1949 - 2011) was an Anglo-American author and journalist. His books made him a prominent public intellectual and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. He was a columnist and literary critic at Vanity Fair, Slate, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry and a variety of other media outlets. He was named one of the world's "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect.

"Titles on feminism, New Labour and the life and times of Christopher Hitchens have been longlisted for the 2011 Orwell Prize for political writing.
The announcement was made at an event on Wednesday [30th March].

Eighteen titles including Natasha Walters' Living Dolls (Virago), Whatever It Takes: The Real Story of Gordon Brown and New Labour by Steve Richards (Fourth Estate) and Hitch 22 by Christopher Hitchens (Atlantic) are all longlisted for the £3,000 book prize."

If Saddam Hussein were still in power, this year's Arab uprisings could never have happened.By Christopher Hitchens

"The most heartening single image of the past month—eclipsing even the bravery and dignity of the civilian fighters against despotism in Syria and Libya—was the sight of Hoshyar Zebari arriving in Paris to call for strong action against the depraved regime of Col. Muammar Qaddafi."

"I heard a few bars of Chris Corner’s song ‘I Salute You Christopher’ a day or so before the new IAMX album, Volatile Times, was released. The song, which appears on the album, is subtitled ‘Ode to Christopher Hitchens’:
I salute you Christopher
I salute your life
How you played the dice …

"Writing in his memoirs, Hitch-22, of the numerous perils that he has faced as a reporter around the globe in places as various as Afghanistan, Northern Ireland and Beirut, Christopher Hitchens reflects that a little danger or discomfort can be a salutary thing: 'I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.’

"Speakeasy has been entertaining ourselves the last few days by leafing through a new book that landed on our desk: “The Quotable Christopher Hitchens.” As the subtitle — “From Alcohol to Zionism” — suggests, there are few subjects that Hitch hasn’t addressed in his long career, mostly with trademark acid wit. The book will be published in May. Here’s a sampler."

Ignore the "realists." If we do nothing, the situation in Libya can only get worse.By Christopher Hitchens

"...Qaddafi senior has reached hisCeausescu moment: a full-dress (in the literal sense) meltdown into paranoia, megalomania, and delusion. His recent speeches and appearances have shown him stinking with madness and hysteria. His age and condition, at any rate, set a very sharp limit to the duration of his regime."Read More (Slate)

The administration's inadequate response to the crisis in Libya reveals a lack of courage and principle.

By Christopher Hitchens

"Our common speech contains numberless verbs with which to describe the infliction of violence or cruelty or brutality on others. It only really contains one common verb that describes the effect of violence or cruelty or brutality on those who, rather than suffering from it, inflict it. That verb is the verb to brutalize"

"When anatomizing revolutions, it always pays to consult the whiskered old veterans. Those trying to master a new language, wrote Karl Marx about the turmoil in France in the 19th century, invariably begin haltingly, by translating it back into the familiar tongue they already know. And with his colleague Friedrich Engels he defined a revolution as the midwife by whom the new society is born from the body of the old."

(CBS News) Steve Kroft profiles Vanity Fair columnist, author and public intellectual Christopher Hitchens, for whom nothing is off-limits when making his wry and often outrageous observations, including the cancer he is suffering from.